Elizabeth Mitchell

Not to be confused with the television actress of the same name who co-starred on the hit series Lost, Elizabeth Mitchell is a folk-rock singer and guitarist with a widely varied background that incorporates coffeehouse-style folksinging, moody and contemplative alt-country, and playful children's music. Mitchell's professional musical career began when she was studying at Brown University in the late '80s, when she formed a folk duo with her roommate, <a href="spotify:artist:1TMMyiSsNzmRiZCAkVLVb2">Lisa Loeb</a>, who worked the Providence, Rhode Island singer/songwriter circuit. When <a href="spotify:artist:1TMMyiSsNzmRiZCAkVLVb2">Loeb</a> and Mitchell graduated in 1990, Mitchell took a day job as a teaching assistant at a private kindergarten on Roosevelt Island, New York, and while there, met a fellow singer and guitarist named Dan Littleton, with whom she formed a quiet, folky indie band called <a href="spotify:artist:59sabZEdH1o4BqCUzXGmd7">Ida</a> in 1991. (Mitchell and Littleton also sang backup and played guitar on <a href="spotify:artist:1TMMyiSsNzmRiZCAkVLVb2">Loeb</a>'s unexpected 1993 hit single, "Stay [I Missed You].")

Three albums into their career, during an enforced layoff occasioned by legal trouble with their new label, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Capitol%22">Capitol</a>, Mitchell and Littleton recorded a homemade duo album of children's songs in a single day in 1998. Originally meant to be a private Christmas gift for the couple's nieces and nephews, the album was eventually released in a limited edition in 1999 as <a href="spotify:artist:59sabZEdH1o4BqCUzXGmd7">Ida</a>'s You Are My Flower. Three years later, You Are My Flower was reissued under Mitchell's own name, in part to avoid confusing <a href="spotify:artist:59sabZEdH1o4BqCUzXGmd7">Ida</a> fans expecting a disc full of traditional folk and country songs. Following the birth of Mitchell and Littleton's first child, Storey Littleton, Mitchell released 2003's You Are My Sunshine, produced in part by <a href="spotify:artist:4LMQqMZYbFJgvxBOzshZVL">His Name Is Alive</a>'s Warren Defever. In 2006, Mitchell signed to <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Smithsonian+Folkways%22">Smithsonian Folkways</a> to release You Are My Little Bird, quite likely the first children's album to feature a cover of <a href="spotify:artist:1nJvji2KIlWSseXRSlNYsC">the Velvet Underground</a>'s "What Goes On." The similarly themed Sunny Day followed in 2010, again on the <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Folkways%22">Folkways</a> label. In 2012, Mitchell offered the quirky and moving Blue Clouds and Little Seed: Songs for Children by Woody Guthrie, the latter of which collected Mitchell's interpretations of <a href="spotify:artist:4rAgFKtlTr66ic18YZZyF1">Guthrie</a>'s freewheeling and often freely associated folk songs from recordings she had made between 1998 and 2012. The following year saw Mitchell team up with fellow family music folkie <a href="spotify:artist:2iYByRd5wrZXBbmTyrISfC">Dan Zanes</a> for the album Turn Turn Turn, and offering up The Sounding Joy, an album of Christmas songs reworked from the <a href="spotify:artist:1xw2D0SqXA6qm7akRYJCMg">Ruth Crawford Seeger</a> songbook. For her next project, Mitchell collaborated with Argentinian folk singer <a href="spotify:artist:1NfOPoGjQfGNsKdUxtFzvJ">Suni Paz</a> on a collection of children's songs in Spanish. Released in 2018, Tu Eres Mi Flor was part of <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Smithsonian+Folkways%22">Smithsonian Folkways</a>' 70th anniversary celebration. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi